Tried to load the videos from the weekend. Even an 11 minute video took way too long to load. I might still split them into smaller videos to share here, but the students in JOUR 8651 can see them already on Vista and students in 3745 will see them distilled into parts of the iChat lecture on Thursday anyway.
However, trying to load the videos further informs my sense of what might work best for professors communicating with students from abroad. Here is a summation of my thoughts on method and tech so far:
1) The Bad
I could not find a reasonable use for Twitter. My Tweets ended this morning. I am pretty sure Twitter is a bad joke, like snipe hunting or the jackalope.
2) The Better
The video method was surprisingly doable. However, in for a penny in for a pound. I would strongly suggest not just going with a cell phone camera. While there is a certain "everyone has one" aspect to that, if one is going to use the video approach to communicate, it is best to have the full functionality of even the least expensive digital cameras. iMovie is very intuitive. However, many researchers would eschew the time it takes to do this, because instead of research, one can start to worry more about the communication itself. If one were doing Media Anthropology fieldwork, for example, there could be subjects that lend themselves to this sort of constant contact "back home" to students on campus. Or, for short trips designed specifically for the purpose of internationalizing the campus classroom, the video method seems to work pretty well. However, that is probably not terribly practical. Few profs will travel specifically for the purpose of internationalizing their campus classrooms, but who knows? Certainly Aaron Doering's (CEHD) polar explorations are inspiring in that regard, as well as many others, The video route is also best for developing an eventual iChat lecture, although that experiment is still to come. The test with Debra and Peter worked well this morning.
3) The Best?
Blogs take less tech and time than even the short iPhone/iMovie. I could see doing this at the end of a day of field research. It is a bit like writing up field notes, although one would not want to share those widely and there would be ethical issues in doing so. I need to find ways to use the multi-media capabilities of blogs better. I like the fact that these can be interactive, so if you are reading this, provide some feedback. :)
I think that is finally it for me today. Tomorrow night I hope to have a nice capper to the "cinematically-mediated Mexico" theme before moving on to a climate-comm related event in Cuernavaca on Wednesday and then the iChats on Thursday.
I'm off to watch Temporado de Patos.
i am really liking the blog thus far.
i think there are some great uses for Twitter, but not everyone digs it. twitter is nice to say a few quick things without having to craft a meaningful post.
ex: Just saw an amazing group of students sing a political song.
OR
Not sure whether the exhibit of tourism media is govt propaganda.
///
thus it gives your readers a sense of your time, place, and thought that can be expanded on later in a linked blog.
it does take awhile to get into twitter, so i am not surprised that you do not like it off the bat. i too disliked it right away. one of my friends uses twitter in his classroom. ill see if he has written anything about it.